Review of The Burning Plain (2008) by Mohamed F — 12 Mar 2011

Arriaga.. as much great of a screenwriter as you are, as bad of a director you happen to be, and I'm sorry about that, but it's the truth..

By watching both that movie and Biutiful, now I have a clear view of what really caused that artistic divorce that took place between Iñarritu and Arriaga..

This movie is pretty close in the narrative style to 21 Grams, and both had great scripts, but the way they were adapted on the screen are much different that made one a classic masterpiece and the other.. well..

To sum it up, the script was Arriaga good, though it had some room for improvement, the directing was out of place, and the editing was one of the most amaturish/disturbing I've ever seen.

Should Arriaga give directing another shot? Absolutely, it's around the 3rd movie that we'd be able to truly judge whether or not he had that gift in him.

Was this a successful debut? No, I've seen worse, but they were low budget indies, but this was a big budget film by a star screenwriter, so yeah, it was pretty bad on so many levels.

Should you watch this movie? I think you should, because this (along with Biutiful) kinda gives closure on the whole Arriaga/Iñarritu artistic split that has been bothering us all.